Rt Hon Baroness Knight of Collingtree DBE
Brian Coleman
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A kindred spirit of Mrs Thatcher, Jill Knight was loyal on most issues but as the wife of an optometrist opposed charging for eye tests
Baroness Knight of Collingtree, who has died aged 98, was a formidable but winsome Right-wing Tory backbencher who campaigned for a generation against abortion, crime, immigration and easier divorce and for the return of the death penalty.
She became the oldest woman to have sat in the House of Commons, comfortably outliving Norah Runge, Conservative MP for Rotherhithe in the 1930s, who died in 1978 aged 93....
Joan Christabel “Jill” Christie was born in Bristol on July 9 1923, one of twins. Her father was an accountant; her parents divorced when she was little. She was educated at Fairfield School, Bristol, and King Edward Grammar School, Birmingham, deciding at 13 to become a Conservative MP....
Leaving school in 1941, she spent the war with the WAAF, then worked for the British Forces Network in Hamburg and acted in the Girls’ Gang Show. She appeared on television with the jolly actor James Hayter, but turned down the chance to play opposite Trevor Howard as she had just got married.....
Jill Knight retired at the 1997 election, and Edgbaston fell to Labour. Created a life peer, she joined the Lords’ Select Committee on the EU, and in 2002 was elected vice-chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers. She retired from the Lords in 2016.
She chaired Lifeline and the Sulgrave Manor Trust, was vice-president of the Townswomen’s Guilds and at various times as a regular visitor to the United States was made a Kentucky Colonel, a Nebraska Admiral, and a Texas Ranger. She was appointed MBE in 1964, and DBE in 1985.
Jill Knight married Montague (Monty) Knight in 1947; he died in 1986, and one of their two sons survives.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree, born July 9 1923, died April 6 2022
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Richard R
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S R Eglesfield
The birth registration entries for the late Lady Knight's sons on Free BMD would seem to be those of Andrew M Knight (Q1 1950 - Daventry) and Roger A Knight (Q3 1953 - Northampton), both showing their mother's maiden name as Christie. Per company records, there was a former company director called Andrew Michael Knight, who was born on 15 March 1950, so this may well have been the elder son; there was also a former director called Roger Anthony Knight, who was born on 13 August 1953, and may have been the younger son.
Lady Knight's name at birth was Joan Christabel MEEK. She was the daughter of Arthur Mark MEEK (1892 - ?) and his wife (married 1922, as her first husband), Alma Elizabeth CHRISTIE (10 XII 1898 - 1978), who was married secondly, in 1932, to Albert E MURCH. It seems that she took her mother's maiden name as her surname after her parents divorced.
Arthur Mark Meek was the Liberal candidate for the Birmingham Moseley constituency in the 1929 General Election. He came in third place, behind the Labour runner-up to the incumbent Conservative MP, Sir Patrick Hannon.
It would appear that Lady Knight had three brothers: her twin, John N MEEK, Anthony M MEEK (birth registered Q3 1925 - Bristol) and Colin A M MEEK (birth registered Q2 1928 - Bristol); she would also appear to have had a stepsister, Alma J J MURCH (birth registered Q1 1936 - Dursley), who was married firstly, to Mr Mitchell in 1959, and secondly, to Mr Griffiths in 1983, from her mother's second marriage.
